How to Add Subtitles to a Video with AI
Upload a video and AI transcribes, times and burns in the captions automatically — 29 styles, draggable placement, no watermark on any plan.
Caption a Video Free120 free tokens on signup · No credit card required
How automatic captioning actually works
No subtitle file to write, no timing to guess by hand. Upload a video and every step below happens from that one file.
Upload the video you want captioned
Drop in an MP4, MOV or WebM up to 500MB — vertical or horizontal, it doesn't matter which. There's no link to paste and nothing to fetch from another site; the video has to be one you already have and have the rights to use.
Speech is transcribed and timed automatically
No subtitle file to write or upload. The audio is transcribed and every line is timed against the footage on its own, so the captions are already synced before you touch a style.
Pick a caption style
Choose from 29 burned-in styles — clean single-line captions, karaoke fills that sweep word by word, bold word-by-word highlights, chat-bubble captions for POV and storytime cuts, emoji pops, typewriter reveals. Five are on the free plan; the rest unlock on paid tiers.
Drag the captions to where you want them
Once a style is picked, drag the caption band up or down over the preview to set the vertical position. That placement is applied at the correct scale no matter what resolution the source video is, so what you see in the preview is what renders.
Render — captions burned into the video itself
The captions aren't a toggle a platform can switch off and they aren't a separate file a viewer has to enable — they're burned into the frame, because most social video is watched on mute and that's the only version of captions that actually gets seen. No watermark on the export, on any plan.
Five tokens, one upload, done
There's no configuration wizard here — upload, wait for the transcript, pick a style, drag the position if you want, and render. Most of the decisions default sensibly, so a first caption job is realistically a two-minute task.
Try it freeCommon questions
New accounts get free tokens with no credit card required, and captioning a short video only costs a few of them — enough to try the real output before deciding whether to buy more.
There's no watermark on anything exported, on any plan, the free one included. What you download is the finished, publish-ready file.
Manually, you'd write out every line, guess at timing, and nudge each cue until it lines up with what's actually being said — tedious even for a two-minute clip, and it multiplies with every video.
The automatic path skips the guessing: upload the video, the speech is transcribed and timed against the audio on its own, then you pick how the captions should look and where they sit on the frame. No subtitle file to write by hand.
A separate .srt file only shows captions if the platform you upload to reads it and the viewer has captions switched on — which is exactly the setting most people never touch. Burned-in captions are rendered directly into the video frames, so they're visible unconditionally, on mute, on any platform, with no setting for anyone to miss.
That's the only mode this tool renders in: upload a video, and the output already has the captions baked into the picture.
Yes — upload the video the same way regardless of where it's headed next. Pick a vertical 9:16 style caption placement if the source is already vertical, or let the caption band scale to whatever resolution you uploaded. The output is a finished MP4 with the captions burned in, ready to post to TikTok, Reels or Shorts.
One that times captions accurately against real speech and doesn't cap the style choice behind a paywall you hit mid-edit. VdoZen transcribes and times automatically, offers 29 burned-in styles across free and paid tiers, and lets you drag the caption position rather than locking it to a fixed spot — useful on Shorts where on-screen UI or a face can sit anywhere in frame.
MP4, MOV and WebM up to 500MB. Both vertical (9:16) and horizontal (16:9) source video are supported, and the caption placement and sizing scale automatically to match whatever resolution you upload.
No — there's no paste-a-link option, and that's deliberate. You upload a file you already have, because fetching arbitrary video from someone else's URL is a copyright and liability problem no captioning tool can safely paper over.
The flow runs the other way: caption the video you're about to publish, then upload the finished, captioned file to YouTube, TikTok or wherever it's going.
Caption your first video free
Upload a video and see the transcript and timing come back automatically. Free tokens on signup, no credit card, and no watermark on anything you export.
Open the caption generatorFree tokens on signup · No credit card required
What you get for free
Every new account starts with 120 tokens — no credit card, no trial timer. That's enough to generate a short video, caption a clip, or run a batch of voiceovers and see the real output quality before spending anything.
You also get a referral code you can share. When someone redeems it, you both get the Starter tier gift with 400 tokens — more voice actors, more caption styles, and the higher-quality generation modes. It's a genuine two-way reward, not a discount code.
Tokens are shared across every tool, so the same balance covers video generation, captions, clipping, voiceovers and SEO. Nothing you export carries a watermark on any plan, free included.
Other VdoZen tools
Every tool shares one account and one token balance — start with any of them.
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Caption a Video FreeNo credit card required · No watermark on exports